Dissident Reveals Secret Chinese Intelligence Plans Targeting U.S.

Guo Wengui calls China communist system a 'kleptocracy,' vows reform

China earlier this year ordered the dispatch of 27 intelligence officers to the United States as part of a larger campaign of subversion, according to a leading Chinese dissident.

Guo Wengui, a billionaire real estate mogul, disclosed what he said was an internal Communist Party document authorizing the Ministry of State Security to send the spies, described as "people's police officers."

Guo, who is being sought by the Chinese government in a bid to silence his disclosures of high-level corruption and intelligence activity, denounced the Beijing regime as corrupt and called for a "revolution" to reform the system.

"My only single goal that I set myself to try to achieve is to change China," Guo said through an interpreter during a National Press Club meeting attended by news reporters and supporters of the exiled dissident.

"What they're doing is against humanity," he said. "What the U.S. ought to do is take action, instead of just talking to the Chinese kleptocracy."

Guo last month requested political asylum in the United States in the face of a high-level Chinese government effort to force the United States to return him to China. China has charged him with several crimes. Guo has denied the charges.

Guo earlier charged that senior Chinese leader Wang Qishan, who controls most of China's finances, is corrupt and has engaged in moving money and documents outside of China. Wang is leading China's nationwide anti-corruption drive that critics say is cover for efforts by Xi to consolidate power.

The Chinese campaign against Guo has included high-level diplomatic and economic pressure on American government and business leaders to lobby for Guo's repatriation.

China's Minister of Public Security, Guo Shengkun, met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday where China's demands for the return of fugitives was discussed.

A Justice Department spokesman said Sessions raised the issue of a Chinese-origin cyber attack against the Hudson Institute, a think tank that had canceled its plan to hold the press conference for Guo under pressure from China. The Justice spokesman, Wynn Hornbuckle, said China pledged their cooperation in investigating the incident.

Hornbuckle would not say if Guo Wengui was discussed during the law enforcement and cyber security talks.

David Tell, a Hudson spokesman, told the Washington Free Beacon, the denial of service cyber attack was traced by investigators to Shanghai.

According to an email obtained by the Free Beacon, a Hudson employee stated that he was asked to forward a message to institute leaders sent from a Chinese Embassy official on Sept. 29.

Chinese officials, according to the email, "want Hudson to cancel the Guo Wengui event because he is a criminal and tells lies, that China is about to enter a sensitive time with its Party Congress, that hosting him would hurt China-U.S. relations, and that this event would embarrass Hudson Institute and hurt our ties with the Chinese government."

The intelligence document released Thursday is one of a number sensitive internal reports obtained by Guo who was once close to MSS Vice Minister Ma Jian, who was imprisoned last year on corruption charges, but who Guo has said was repressed politically because of his knowledge of corruption among Chinese leaders.

Guo said he had planned to disclose three internal Chinese government documents during the Hudson event. But instead he burned the documents after the event was canceled.

Guo said he maintains close ties to supporters within the Chinese government and security system and is able to obtain many internal documents.

According to Guo, for simply holding the top-secret document he distributed at the press conference, a person could be jailed in China for three to five years.

The document was issued by the National Security Council, a new Chinese government and Party entity headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The MSS operatives will work under cover at the Bank of China branch offices and at Chinese diplomatic facilities in the United States.

The document is labeled "top secret" and dated April 27. It was released by Guo at a press conference in Washington during which he appealed for the U.S. government to wake up to the threat posed by China and counter it.

Guo said the authenticity of the document was confirmed by the U.S. government.

The directive to the MSS was formally called "The Request for Instructions on the Working Plan of Secretly Dispatching and 27 People's Police Officers, He Jianfeng and Others from the Ministry of State Security to the United States on Field Duty in 2017."

According to the document the MSS should follow Chinese ideology set out by the late leader Deng Xiaoping, as well as the concepts outlined in speeches by Xi, the current leader.

The document is one of the first internal documents to reveal how China is expanding intelligence activities targeting what it calls "hostile forces" in the United States.

The MSS, according to the report, was told to "go according to the need of the strategic arrangements" of the Communist Party "against overseas hostile forces, strictly abide by our national principles of state security work on the United States, and use the opportunity of the rise of our comprehensive national strength and Sino-U.S. diplomatic relations tending to ease to further expand the scope and depth of the infiltration into the anti-China hostile forces in the United States."

The MSS agents are to enter the United States secretly in phases and "use the cover of the executives of the state-owned enterprises in the United States, such as the Bank of China (New York) to carry out solid intelligence collection, to incite defection of relevant individuals, and to conduct counter-espionage, etc."

The spies also were directed to focus on "extraordinarily significant criminal suspects, including Ling Wancheng, Guo Wengui, and Cheng Muyang, etc."

Ling is the brother of Ling Jihua, a former high-ranking Chinese official who China has accused of illegal activities and who defected to the United States in 2016. Cheng is a real estate mogul in Canada who China also accused of illegal activities.

"If necessary, they should also actively support, cooperate with, and assist the personnel in the United States who conduct the United Front operations, diplomatic operations, and military intelligence operations to carry out related business," the document states.

United Front work is what the Chinese government calls influence operations aimed at coopting Americans into supporting Beijing's policies.

The directive urges the spies to "make contributions for further crushing overseas anti-China hostile forces."

Lastly, MSS officials should seek to strengthen the organization and provide after actions reports to the senior Party organ.

"We have friends all over the world … those who provide the documents are among the most senior people, including the current Politburo standing committee," Guo said. "My material is real. Otherwise, they wouldn't be afraid of it."

Guo said during his press conference that since the April directive, around 50 additional intelligence operatives were sent to the United States.

An FBI spokeswoman had no comment on the document. A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment.

On Saturday, China's Public Security Ministry issued a statement denying China was behind the hack of a law firm representing Guo and the Hudson Institute. The ministry also disputed the authenticity of the document.

"An official of the Ministry of Public Security states that, China paid close attention to such allegations and launched immediate investigation," the statement said. "But no evidence has been found that China and its government have been involved with these incidents."

The ministry also called the documents revealed by Guo "utterly clumsily forged and full of obvious mistakes." It did not elaborate but offered to cooperate in a U.S. investigation into the authenticity of the materials and cooperate in the probe of the cyber attacks.

According to Guo, China is engaged in a three-pronged campaign of subversion in the United States he labeled "Blue-Gold-Yellow," with each color standing for a different line of attack.

Blue represents large-scale Chinese cyber and internet operations while gold represents China's use of money and financial power. The yellow is part of a plan to use sex to undermine American society.

Another Chinese government subversion program was described by Guo using the code name the "Three Fs." It involves China's systematic programs targeting the United States with the goal to weaken the country, throw the country into turmoil and ultimately defeat America.

Asked about the major Communist Party meeting scheduled for later this month, Guo said: "I would like all members of the Chinese Communist Party to wake up and say no to this ruling clique."

Guo disclosed that he was imprisoned in China after the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and spent 22 months in prison. Chinese police also shot his brother, who later died.

Since then, he has spent the intervening years as an entrepreneur preparing to expose corrupt Chinese leaders, a process he began in January.

China has retaliated by freezing some $17 billion in assets in China and by imprisoning business associates and relatives of Guo.

Radio France's Chinese-language radio service reported recently that several Chinese have been harassed by authorities for discussing Guo's disclosures about Wang's corruption. The report called the activity "Guo Wengui-phobia."

Chinese censors have cracked down on people online who used the phrases used by Guo, like "Wang-Seven-Three" and "73" for Wang Qishen. Also a person wearing the t-shirt with the word "all of this is only the beginning"—one of Guo's catch phrases on social media was detained.

"Those who support Guo Wengui call out ‘put a pot on your head,' a homophone for ‘support Guo,'" the French report said. "Those who desperately want to catch him want to ‘smash that pot,' literally meaning ‘smash the pot,' but the term means ‘to fail.'"

China also recently blocked the messaging app WhatsApp, after China tightened controls on WeChat, Weibo, and Baidu message boards that were sharing posts on Guo.

"Looking at social media, every time Guo Wengui has revealed the secrets of a corrupt official, there’s been a reaction on the streets of Beijing," the report said. "In restaurants, bars, in the streets and alleyways, people see each other and, smiling, ask, ‘What did he say now?' It’s become a tacit greeting."

Bill GertzEmail Bill | Full Bio | RSSBill Gertz is senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Beacon he was a national security reporter, editor, and columnist for 27 years at the Washington Times. Bill is the author of seven books, four of which were national bestsellers. His most recent book was iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age, a look at information warfare in its many forms and the enemies that are waging it. Bill has an international reputation. Vyachaslav Trubnikov, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, once called him a “tool of the CIA” after he wrote an article exposing Russian intelligence operations in the Balkans. A senior CIA official once threatened to have a cruise missile fired at his desk after he wrote a column critical of the CIA’s analysis of China. And China’s communist government has criticized him for news reports exposing China’s weapons and missile sales to rogues states. The state-run Xinhua news agency in 2006 identified Bill as the No. 1 “anti-China expert” in the world. Bill insists he is very much pro-China—pro-Chinese people and opposed to the communist system. Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once told him: “You are drilling holes in the Pentagon and sucking out information.” His Twitter handle is @BillGertz.